IEEE Women Leadership Summit Begins In Kerala

IEEE women leadership summit begins in Kerala with the aim to facilitate the recruitment and retention of women in technical disciplines globally

A two-day international leadership summit of IEEE Women in Engineering, Kerala Section, began in Thiruvananthapuram on Friday.

IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) is one of the largest international professional organizations dedicated towards promoting women engineers and scientists and inspiring girls around the world to follow their academic interests to a career in engineering.

The event marks its 20th-anniversary celebrations and showcases women’s talents who have been successful in the fields of engineering, business, arts, and humanitarian causes.

Aswathy Thirunal Gauri Lakshmi Bayi of the royal family of erstwhile Travancore was invited to inaugurate the conference. At the inauguration ceremony, she said, “Kerala had a long history of walking the talk on women empowerment, even prior to its formation following the State reorganisation. In 1817, Gowri Parvati Bayi, the regent of erstwhile Travancore, issued the royal rescript for universal education by which Travancore became the first government in the world to promulgate a decree for State-sponsored free and compulsory education for all boys and girls.”

This year the theme of the summit is ‘Empowerment, Leadership and Equality. “It aimed at motivating and strengthening women entrepreneurs and professionals and would discuss road maps to successful entrepreneurship models for women,” Mini Ulanat, chair, IEEE Kerala, said.

Among many things, the panel discussion on ‘Diversity and gender equality’ took the spotlight on the first day. Moreover, Anne Ferrer, executive director of Rural Development Trust, Andhra Pradesh, led the plenary session on ‘Bringing change through caring’, which was also one of the highlighted events of the day.